Every Now Is a Yes by Kathleen Wade

$17.99

 

Kathleen Wade’s Every Now Is a Yes is an intimate reflection on the people, places, and experiences that weave the tapestry of who we are, and it chronicles Wade’s brave journey toward saying “yes” to it all. “Everything I have ever done / has prepared me for this,” she writes in “Meditation at the Shoreline.” The poems shimmer with haunting portraits of people who are etched in the poet’s memory – a transgender youth named Leelah, a struggling panhandler at Christmas, and the “ordinary guy” who caused “the third-worst bus crash in US history.” At times, the collection aches for the suffering in the world as the poet quietly utters a prayer to save a sparrow with a broken leg. But these stirring and striking poems are finally about grace. The poem “Like the Sun” reminds us that even when we feel the “rain has thickened the veil,” at that moment, “even then / we shine.”

–Donelle Dreese, author of Organelle and Sophrosyne

 

Thank you, Kathleen Wade!  Your poems are songs for being with in a world which glorifies being against.  Whether your poems involve me in moments of glory or cruelty, place me in stories on beaches, porches, or city streets, they inspire me to sing my own Nows into (sacred) Yeses.

–Mary Pierce Brosmer, Founder of Women Writing for (a) Change; author of Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation (2009); and the author of numerous poems and essays.

 

The opening poem in Kathleen Wade’s poetry chapbook, Every Now is a Yes, lists instructions for developing film in a darkroom—as the “image / shimmers into being,” we are left with one word: “Tremble.” Indeed, the poems in this collection shimmer, take shape, and sharpen into the focused insight of a speaker who has lived her life with careful attention. This poet turns a keen eye toward life influences: her maternal family line, grief about not having biological children (especially daughters), mature marriage, acknowledged “white privilege,” and an abiding appreciation for natural beauty. A complex picture emerges of a woman who cares deeply about humanity and our world. Witness poems about transgender people (and other social justice causes) and tender encounters in nature demonstrate deeply held passion. Wade writes, “Everywhere I have ever been/has brought me here.” This book is art honed to reflect a seeker’s gained wisdom and elevate our appreciation for poetry’s gift of sublime mindfulness.

–Ellen Austin-Li, author of Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes from Early in the Pandemic (2021), Finishing Line Press

 

 

 

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Every Now Is a Yes

by Kathleen Wade

Paper

$17.99
979-8-88838-347-6
2023
Every Now Is a Yes invites you to step into a metaphorical photographer’s darkroom where the poet has coaxed images, stories and all manner of people to develop and take flesh. Travel with the author across country in a 1950 Chevy, or stand with the poet on a Carolina beach and see the perigee moon kissing the earth. The author teases out the meaning behind an abandoned car on a highway overpass, or a farmer building a “wind phone” on a hillside in Japan. Images come to light and develop in this collection, where each poem leads to the next in a collage of light and shadow. An observer of the everyday, the poet draws a picture by uniting creature and creator, parent and child, beggar and bystander.  Every Now Is a Yes tells an intimate story of becoming.

Kathleen Wade began writing poetry around age eleven, after inheriting her father’s hand-me-down Olympia typewriter. Her poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Plymouth Writers Group, Ohio Teachers Write, For a Better World, Inside Out:SOS Art Cincinnati, Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020, Medium.com, and for several years in the City of Cincinnati’s Neighborhood Poets Laureate Anthology. A non-fiction book, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, was published in 2012. A fictional memoir, Perfection, was published in 2018.

Kathy is a fourth-generation Cincinnatian and has lived and worked in six distinct and interesting Cincinnati neighborhoods, except for one glorious year in Berkeley, California. She earned her B.A. from Xavier University and her M.Ed. from the University of Cincinnati. Following a career as an English and drama teacher, Kathy devoted a decade to facilitating writing classes and workshops at Women Writing for (a) Change, a writing community in Cincinnati. Most recently she has been the director of a leadership-development program for women religious and their associates. She lives with her husband in yet-another interesting Cincinnati neighborhood called College Hill.

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